President Donald Trump on Monday issued a sharp response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's announcement of a successful test of the Kremlin's new "invincible" nuclear-capable cruise missile — a weapon Putin says can strike targets anywhere on Earth and evade any known air defense system.
Traveling aboard Air Force One early Monday, Trump was pressed by reporters about the Russian test and responded with a mixture of warning and reassurance.
"It's not appropriate," Trump said, referring to the timing of Moscow's missile announcement amid escalating global tensions and stalled peace negotiations over the war in Ukraine.
"Putin ought to end the war — a war that should've taken one week is now in its fourth year. That's what he ought to do instead of testing missiles."
The president, who has often portrayed himself as capable of de-escalating global conflicts through direct diplomacy, warned that the U.S. maintains a powerful deterrent of its own.
"They know we have a nuclear submarine, the greatest in the world, right off their shores," Trump said pointedly.
"We don't need to go 8,000 miles. They know that. We are not playing games with them, and they are not playing games with us."
The Russian leader personally oversaw the test, appearing in military fatigues in a video released by the Kremlin on Sunday.
He directed his top generals to begin preparing the new missile — known as the Burevestnik, or "Storm Petrel" — for operational deployment within Russia's strategic nuclear forces.
"We need to determine the possible uses and begin preparing the infrastructure for deploying these weapons to our armed forces," Putin declared, hailing the long-range missile as a technological breakthrough that solidifies Russia's deterrence power.
According to Russian military officials, the missile covered an astonishing 14,000 kilometers (nearly 8,700 miles) in a multi-hour test flight — though, they stressed, that is not the weapon's maximum range.
Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian military's general staff, said the Burevestnik "successfully performed all designated vertical and horizontal maneuvers, demonstrating its strong ability to evade anti-missile and air defense systems."
Trump appeared to temper his comments by acknowledging that missile testing is a routine part of superpower strategy.
"We test missiles all the time," he said, implying that the U.S. response would not be one of panic, but of strength and preparedness.
The Burevestnik missile — known by NATO as the SSC-X-9 Skyfall — has long been a subject of Western intelligence concern.
Reports of its testing date back to 2017, when U.S. officials said several early attempts ended in failure. The missile is believed to be nuclear-powered, theoretically allowing it to remain airborne for days and travel virtually unlimited distances before striking its target.
The Kremlin has touted the system as capable of penetrating U.S. missile shields and hitting "any target on Earth," positioning it as part of Russia's response to Western sanctions and NATO expansion.
Military analysts warn that, if fully operational, the Burevestnik could fundamentally alter the global nuclear balance by giving Moscow a weapon capable of delivering a nuclear strike from unpredictable directions — including over the South Pole, where missile defenses are weakest.
"This is a symbolic and strategic statement from Putin," one senior U.S. defense official said.
"It's less about immediate battlefield utility and more about showing that Russia can still innovate and threaten global stability despite sanctions and war setbacks."
In his Monday comments, Trump made clear that he sees the test as a dangerous distraction from what he called "Russia's failure in Ukraine." Yet he also suggested that the United States remains "ready for anything."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.